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The ghosts surroundedto glow in the fading strea the vast open area As ever, it was little Cat who kept closest, while Bear surged forward, leading the way

Both he and Cat had always considered h we déchet shouldn’t have even understood the concept Our closeness was primarily due to the amount of ti up to the war Even during the war, those lures not out on assignment or in a recovery period were put to use in the nurseries; our task had been to teach and to protect the next generation of fighters

Because despite what the shifters had believed, there’d been only a finite supply of us Our creators had discovered early on that while the use of accelerant increased the speed of physical growth, it did not enhanceth and speed of shifters, but sending your rifle fodder out with the body of an adult and the mind of a child really defeated the purpose of their creation So while they’d halved our development time, they hadn’t been able to erase it completely

I came to the tower and unlocked the thick metal doors that led to the rooftop stairwell, then unlatched the silver h shifter in led as I touched it, but it wasn’t as deadly to h theair that was thick with disuse and age Visitors wanting to see the ancient solar technology did so from the special observation platform that had been built to one side of the tower rather than accessing the panels through the tower itself, sierous For the last couple of years there’d been talk of tearing it down before it actually fell, but, so far, nothing had actually happened I hoped it never did I wasn’t entirely sure what I would do if it was knocked down and I was left with only the decaying generators to power round systems

We reached the metal exit plate at the top of the stairs It was also silver, but it was so scarred with heat and blast daer looked it I drew back the bolts and pushed the plate open

The children flung thelorious sunset, and that alone told erous nearby But there was no shaking the years of training, even though the need for suchsince passed I drew in a deep breath and sorted through the various scents, looking for anything unusual or out of place There was nothing As I clied at my short hair, and I looked up to see the doain It was an odd fact that this section of doularly It was almost as if the old toanted to feel the wind and the rain on its fading bones It just ht, because the heaviness of the clouds so tinted by the sun’s last dance of the day suggested it wasn’t going to be a good night to be out on the streets

Not that there was ever a good night to be out on them

I zipped up h the banks of solar panels to the oldthat lined the rooftop The walls of Central City rose before htly under the strengthening glow of the UV light towers perched on top of the hts on the rooftops of the h-rises, all of them aimed at the streets in an effort to erase any shadows created by either the buildings or the wall itself

Lying between Central and the bunker’s dolowing, caterpillar-like pods to the various production zones that provided the city with the necessities of life But with dusk co on, there was little e had already risen, securing Central against the coht

The inhabitants of Chaos—which was the long-accepted na to the curved sides of Central’s curtain wall—had no such protection It was an interconnected e units, old wood, and plastic that was ten stories high and barely five wide The upper reaches bristled with antennas and wind turbines that gliht from Central’s UV towers, but the lower reaches of Chaos already lay encased in darkness Lights gl

eaathering shadows

And it was in these shadows that the vaned supreme

The shifters ht have claimed victory in the war, but in truth, the only real winners had been the vampires While they’d never been a part of the war—or of society in general—their nuh death toll They were creatures untouched by the basic needs of the living Water, power, sanitation—the very things humanity considered so vital—had no impact on the way vampires lived their lives, because their lives consisted of nothing h they preferred to dine on the living, they were not averse to digging up the dead

Before the war, most cities had relied solely on the UV towers to stop the vampires But the cities of old had been built on a network of underground service tunnels, which gave the va in ash and ruin after the war, the shifters had taken the chance to rebuild “vampire-proof” cities for both victor and vanquished to live in So not only were there massive curtain walls and UV towers around every round, in special conduits that had been “beautified” to disguise what they were

Chaos, unprotected by either lights or walls, and still sitting on ularly hit by the vae of Central seemed to care

Of course, vaht or the shadows When the shifters had unleashed the bombs that had finally ended the war, they’d torn apart the very fabric of the world, creating drifting doorways between this world and the next These rifts were filled with a ic that not only twisted the essence of the landscape, but also killed anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in their path That in itself would not have been so bad if the Others had not gained access into our world through many of these rifts These hellish creatures—creatures the humans and shifters had nah in truth no one really knew if they were from hell or merely another tiround in the shadows of our world

But at least one good thing had come from their arrival—it had finally forced shifters and hureater foe

And yet humanity’s fear of vampires had not been usurped by this newer evil Even I feared the vahwould

Ghostly fingers ran down ertips I followed Cat as she drifted toward the left edge of the building,beneath the trees were vacant of life, and nothingthe street and the battered re to uncover as causing the little ones so much consternation

Then I heard it

The faint crying of a child

A young child, not an older one, if the tone of her voice was anything to go by

She was in the trees At dusk, with the vampires about to come out An easy meal if I wasn’t very quick

I spun and ran for the stairs The ghosts gathered aroundthe need to hurry I paused long enough to slam down the hatch and shove the bolts home, then scra to sendat any moment